10 books with unique concepts (that will blow your mind)

Whether it’s video games, movies or books - I personally love when the media I’m consuming thinks outside of the box, tries to break the so-called 4th wall or has a unique spin to it. In this video I want to show you 10 of these books with unique concepts and twists that will blow your mind.
00:00 Intro
00:15 Mark Z Danielewski - House of Leaves
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01:35 Ernest Vincent Wright - Gadsby
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03:05 Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
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04:22 Geoff Ryman - 253
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05:37 Julio Cortázar - Hopscotch
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06:57 Italo Calvino - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
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07:51 E. Powys Mathers - Cain’s Jawbone
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09:15 Bohumil Hrabal - Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
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10:07 Douglas Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach
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11:34 Doug Dorst & JJ Abrams - S.
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[@relarin952]

I love when writers really do just decide to do the strangest things to test their craft and it's even better when it creates something really unique

[@NekoMouser]

It's not "mind-blowing" by today's standards, but "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" was pretty revolutionary for its time. Many describe it as postmodernism 200 years before postmodernism. It's his autobiography, but there are chapters out of order, the preface is in the middle, he speculates about what the cover of his book might look like and so there's just pages of marbled patterns, he gets writer's block or just forgets to write for a while (can't quite remember which) and it results in a series of blank pages, it's quite bawdy...all sorts of things. The writing style and "pop culture references" from the 1700s may not resonate with many modern readers, but if you like this sort of playing with form and pushing the limits on what a book can be and do, Tristam Shandy is a great early example of an author playing around with those exact same questions.

[@Daniel-wi6sk]

And an autobiography that starts not with the day the author/narrator was born, but by the night he was conceived… that has to be a very special book, a quite extraordinary book. Not to mention that we witness the dialogue taking place between the parents during the « act » of conception itself, with its supposed (negative) consequences on the life of the narrator…

[@michaelgrosberg2665]

He doesn't get to his own birthday until the third volume because he keeps getting sidetracked. Then at some point he plots his narrative in graph form for every volume so far to show he's getting less sidetracked in more recent volumes.

[@mrwittyone]

This"unfilmable novel" was turned into pretty good film called Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, starring Steve Coogan.

[@lulujones]

Shoutout to Uncle Toby!!!!

[@francoisjohannson139]

Stanislaw Lem: "The perfect vacuum". A collection of reviews of books that do not exist. Very funny.

[@user-gf3fg5go1s]

Yes thats a great book. As well as "imaginäre Größe" (translated to imaginary size) containing forewords to books that dont exist.

[@nl3064]

I loved Lem's Solaris. That's my contribution to this conversation.

[@muesique]

Der Futurologische Kongreß! No LSD needed! 😏

[@nl3064]

@@muesique I liked the movie version of The Congress.

[@r.michaelburns112]

The really hard thing abut avoiding "e" (an assignment I give my students to challenge them to consider every word in a short passage with great care) is not using the most common word in the English language -- "the" (ss you can see from this sentence).

[@phon1x1]

For non English speaker - it’s quite an easy task. Seriously, I have no idea why do you guys need “the”.

[@Dr_Larken]

Or the o?! Like in about, abut

[@theelysium1597]

Also not being able to use "be" is hard, too. In German avoiding "e" is also difficult, but by no means as difficult as in English, I feel like.

[@Multi_Purpose_Weirdo]

I can avoid that symbol but it is difficult to do. In past months I satisfy my linguistic cravings with horror books.

[@nomorenames5568]

I love these kinds of books with meta-fictional elements. Great list. One of my favorites is a book called "My Tired Father" by Romanian surrealist Gellu Naum. It's an autobiography written by doing Burroughs style cut-ups of American magazines. It starts out reading like just random aphorisms but as you keep reading you start to the see the outline of a life in the random fragments of sentences. Also, Calvino was a member of the Oulipo group, a literary group still around today technically which focused on the idea that constraints fuel creativity. They made a lot of really random books based on crazy constraints like "A Void" by Perec that is a lipogramatic book which means it's written without the use of a letter, in this case E. The book is also about finding the missing letter!

[@Niesrind]

In the comics of "Mr Invincible" (Imbattable), the hero knows that he is in a comic and jumps around between panels creating strange timeloops. But that's not all: there are people walking 'backwards' through the panels, portal away and there is even a hole in one of the pages that is incorporated into the story. (Writer: P. Jousselin) Another book for this video is 'Ella Minnow Pea' by Mark Dunn. His story takes place on an island where there are letters hung up that make a sentence using every letter of the alphabeth once. One day, a letter falls down. From then on, that letter is never used again in the text of the book. Soon other letters follow, restricting the letters that are still used in the rest of the text. The people try to use other words to get around not using the fallen letters, but that gets more difficult as the story proceeds.

[@TheGhostRhythms]

Yes it's really great

[@panopticon3461]

Another recommendation I’ll add to the rest - Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, which is a very heavily footnoted stream-of-consciousness retelling of a lunch break. The footnotes have footnotes; it’s a wonderful representation of a non-linear experience accomplished in such a linear medium.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

God, there is just so much good stuff out there. Put this one on my TBR as well. Thanks! 🙏🏻

[@sweetpeabrown261]

As reading material they don't appeal to me, but as an artist I support and applaud anyone who pursues their dreams. I am always fascinated to know 'what' people's dreams are.

[@Ratatouilles]

Hopscotch (Rayuela in spanish) is one of the most famous books in the Spanish language, it is often a recommended read in high school in many countries. I read it when I was a teen and still one of my favourite books. Totally recommended.

[@matte0p]

These all sound intriguing. Thanks for introducing them

[@PhilRingsmuth]

Thank you for this video! I had only heard of a few of these, and now I've got all of them in my "might read this someday" list.

[@joshgladfelter9597]

Fantastic video! I’m so glad I discovered your channel. I’ve written down every one of the books that you’ve mentioned, because they all sound fascinating. I’ve actually read S years ago and was blown away. Looking forward to chipping away at the others.

[@actualclown1138]

good video with good production and great explanations, def subscribing!

[@jasonhorn901]

Great content! Thanks so much for taking the time to share this.

[@Daniel-wi6sk]

Interesting, there are a few titles I didn’t know. Just a comment from a French native speaker : there is in French a famous “lipogramme en E” called “La disparition”, from author Georges Perec a 250 page book. On one level “La disparition” deals with the disappearance of the letter E itself. On another level, more hidden and complex, La disparition also refers to the disappearance of Perec’s parents in the nazi concentration camps. The name Perec contains only the vowel E…

[@maciekkochanowicz7015]

Perec is definitely a miss on this list. Not only "La disparition", but even more so "La vie mode d'emploi", which came to my mind, when he was reviewing "253".

[@Paperwood360]

Thanks for this. I really like your direct, concise style, got a new sub today.

[@jameswight6259]

Oh no! Another book tube channel that’s going to cost me lots of money! That fatal combination of great reviews of fascinating sounding books. It’s money and time well spent though, so thanks. I subscribed.

[@roshansell1804]

this was interesting, entertaining, and really well made. Keep making high quality stuff!

[@bite-sizedshorts9635]

I own and have read "Godel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid." "Metamagical Themas" is a thicker book by the same writer. Hofstadter used to write for "Scientific American," which is where I became acquainted with him. I had to buy both books and read them cover to cover more than once. I might just pull them from the shelf and read them again. I don't have any of the other books, but I have downloaded a PDF of "Cain's Jawbone" so I can have a crack at the mystery. I'm very good at solving puzzles.

[@cj-seejay-cj-seejay]

My favorite Lipogram book is Ella Minnow Pea. :)

[@ASMRChess]

Thank you, great video!

[@snowmonster42]

Thanks for this video and thanks to everyone who responded with more recommendations. The only one of these that I've read is Pale Fire, which was also my introduction to the notion of an unreliable narrator. I feel like I ought to have a recommendation to offer - at the moment the only thing I can think of is the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It's less Literary (note the capital L) than the offerings here, but it's lots of fun and it answers our questions about what the characters of a novel do in their time off.

[@slein_grobaaf]

killer list and topic, thanks

[@amriteshmukherjee646]

I absolutely loved your production quality and presentation (killed it!) and I'm certainly going in for all of these. Have read House of Leaves (and it's an all time favorite), have a copy of the Calvino one (some of my friends have been almost begging me to read Winter's Night for some time now), and have been eyeing the Cain's Jawbone, Pale FIre, and the Abrams one for months now. Have you heard of XX by Rian Hughes? I've got the book, yet to read it, but saw it being recommended in a whole lot of forums while reading about House of Leaves. PS. You got a new subscriber! :)

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Thanks so much Amritesh, really much appreciated! :) XX was actually on my wider list of potential books for this video, so I'm sure at some point I'll do a part two. 😁 x

[@t0dd000]

Fascinating exploration of the creative mind.

[@ameyakale2739]

As an author - this list is goddamn inspiring. Will be going through all of them, thank you so much for making this video! In one of my stories, I wrote an entire chapter that did not have verbs (it was necessary for that specific chapter) and I felt pretty proud of that - but seeing the genius at play in this list of books... I want to go back and recraft it :D Thanks again!

[@wintermute5974]

There's a really striking one called _A Humument,_ by the artist Tom Phillips. It's basically an old victorian novel where Philips has drawn over most of the text on every page, with the remaining words forming new meanings. It's a really fascinating hybrid between an art book and a poetry collection.

[@Nezuji]

I first learned about Cain's Jawbone through a brief comment in a Grand Illusions video where Tim didn't even give the title. After a fair amount of research I managed to get more details for the book, and tracked down a copy of the original book (this was a few years before the reprint was published). I was so excited to get cracking on such an Interesting puzzle! Unfortunately, I found it completely impenetrable. I couldn't even figure out how to get started. IIRC the original printing of the book has even less information to go on than you gave in this video.

[@LlamaDuck2211]

I love this!

[@Mr.PauloSica]

Awesome video!!! ❤❤❤

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Thank you :)

[@wintermute5974]

_The Uncanny_ by Nicholas Royle stands out as a really interesting example because it's an academic book, mostly about literary theory. It's less out there than most of the books you list, but the way it's structured and the content is really out there considering what it is.

[@JanVee2]

To the list can be added: the works of Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Laurence Sterne, Jan Potocki and many others. Mindblowing prose indeed, but it asks for a different mindset and reading-attitude.

[@jman7826]

I would add Flann O’Brien

[@nomorenames5568]

Yea the Oulipo are entirely about these sorts of books. I love Queneau, Excercises in Style is such a good book to read before writing. Also his sonnet "A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems" is a truly amazing feat.

[@DavidLettvin]

Potocki's "Manuscript found at Saragossa" is absolutely extraordinary. I have lent out several copies and recently had to order a replacement. They never get returned. The nesting stories can reach insane depths.

[@barry_t]

I'm so glad you had GEB on this list...I would recommend the follow-on by Hofsteadler (sp) "Le Ton Beau De Marot" which points to plenty other mind bending books...if you liked GEB, you'll enjoy this as well, well I hope. And thanks for this list!

[@ratunkuuu]

Thank you for this intriguing compilation. I know only 3 books from the list

[@Jerry_Fried]

I had “Gödel, Escher, Bach” back in the ‘80s. It was fascinating.

[@rogerkearns8094]

I still have it.

[@TheLindarosewood]

He wrote I Am A Strange Loop to explain more explicitly the themes supported by all that number theory and fictional dialogues of GEB. That later book is also a meditation on love, grief, and a secular definition of “soul.” A masterpiece.

[@caronstout354]

Recommended: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, a post-apocalptic novel written in a "de-evolved" form of English that has a dictionary of the language included...

[@edraiugaaguiar2580]

I had already included "Gödel, Escher, Bach" in my read list, but only because it seemed like a book that dove into Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which is a subject I'm fascinated about. When I saw this book in your list I shivered. Definitely gonna read it now, knowing what it really is about

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Better brace yourself for a wild ride :D

[@manicmuffin]

Excellent list, weird fiction is my favorite genre!

[@willk7184]

Excellent and much needed explanations for these intriguing books! By the way, for those taking on G.E.B. ... On my second read-through I found a hidden self-referencial message in the dialogue from Ch. 3. Happy reading. 🤨

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Kudos to you for reading through that behemoth twice 😂

[@Bookspine5]

Reading ergodic literature, like Ship of Theseus, was an enjoyable experience. I am compelled to reread Ship of Theseus.

[@missstarbuck]

I would love to read a book like these some day :D

[@MrUndersolo]

I have read the Calvino, and I own copies of the Nabokov and Cortazar. I will be added to my list!

[@dp4483]

Dont forget : Robert Pirsig - Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance Daniel Quinn - Ishmael Vladimir Megre - Ringing Cedars series

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Great, just put all of these on my TBR list! Thanks!

[@brandosbucket]

The fact that the first book on the list is my favourite book, that's a promising start.

[@Red-Wolf-Ben]

Surprised a video like this didn't include the Princess Bride!

[@bozhidarmihaylov]

Great image placement 0:55 :)

[@allp1nk92]

I would recomend Ella Minnow Pea as a book in a fun, weird style. Within the story a there is an island with a monument containing the phrase "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and one of the letters falls off and the rulers of the island decide that the citizens of the island arent allowed to use that letter anymore spoken or written or else theyll get thrown in jail. And since the book itself is a series of letters between characters, the letters that fall stop showing up in the book. Its very good.

[@otakuofmine]

Great Video! I can think of another: Impossible Landscapes, a campaign of the ttrpg Delta Green. The main "villain" is an entropic force that latches especially on the arts and artist, like a reality virus replacing theirs. The book's layout gets more and more fragmented and weird as you go. Words are crossed, written backwords, repeated - and just enough to make you wonder everytime. the layout itself, and its borders/colours get the same treatment. (in the story is a dangerous sign that can prime you and its highlighted in the book every time its mentioned. ) the thing that really makes it ergodic is that all things are linked in a subtle way that you have to read it at least twice to get most and than you have to read careful to get all clues and weird coincidences (unrelated things happen at the same time, unrelated people having the same last name. it also plays with time as the force in the book seems to transcend it, people appearing out of time in places they shouldnt be). its surreal horror and the book itself cleverly shows that. and if you read the stories this campaign is based on, you will even find more clues and truths, like you can never fully understand it all. I have never read a book that goes about surreality in such a clever way. defying expectations what a ttrpg book should be. no surprise that it is considered an enormous effort to even prepare and run this one. (i am doing atm)

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Love this, Thanks so much. Will definitely look further into this!!

[@otakuofmine]

@@nicholasbeutler3126 oh that would be interesting to hear here!

[@Multi_Purpose_Weirdo]

House of Leaves is a clever, weird, multi-layered masterpiece. It is one of my favorite haunted house stories, every bit as worthy as Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, and Hell House. Recently I read a haunted house book called Episode Thirteen that was a lot of fun. It reminded me of the movie Grave Encounters.

[@vargero]

Opened the video just because I knew Calvino’s book would be here. Maybe it’s time to read it again :)

[@Poohtle]

Some of these books sound harder than my entire university degree studies!! 👀😊

[@DadgeCity]

I'm a fan of conceptual art and literature, even oulipo. Among my favourites are Walter Abish and Georges Perec.

[@BeMyArt]

My short story collection includes stories created by my mind in two conditions - sleep and awake. There's qr code at the end of the book which leads to web site i created. There you can try to guess which stories based on dreams. Not the same but wanted to share my concept with someone 😅 I worked so much on it but only one person read in a year😭

[@Wishbone1977]

One of the most mind-bending books I have ever read is _The Illuminatus! Trilogy_ by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. It's a difficult read which requires a lot of concentration to keep up with the narrative, but I found it quite good. As an example, at one point it switched the narrative from a male protagonist in the third person to a female protagonist in the first person and seven years earlier _mid-sentence._ The story itself revolves (as the title might suggest) around various conspiracy theories and is quite humorous.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

That sounds crazy tbh. But I'm all up for these kind of concepts! 😄

[@allonszenfantsjones]

Don't know the name of it, but I remember a book I started and I got halfway through when I realized holy moly every single chapter leads you to think that you're going to find resolution, or even the continuation of the narrative, until you realize that no, a new story has been started that again will not resolve. with the same main character! Arghhh! Takes place in an apocalyptic Russian neighborhood as I recall, complete with crumbling housing blocks.

[@vanyacrow]

Maybe already popped up in another comment; you may want to check "Dictionary of the Khazars" by Milorad Pavic. He wrote the story through dictionary entries, well, actually four dictionaries, where the references and calls between entry tell different versions of the same story. Quite a treat :)

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Put it on my list! Love all of these recommendations in the comments so far. :)

[@markvetter4711]

The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall would fit nicely on this list.

[@EvieWren]

These remind me of a YA book I read a bit back. Sci-fi, possibly sci-fi horror. it was called The Illuminae Files iirc, and was presented as a series of medical reports, military files, journal entries, dialogue and CCTV transcripts, emails, and text messages, all set on a trio of spaceships fleeing from a corporate warship out to destroy them. It was really neat, part of a trilogy.

[@bornhuman67]

Dan Rhodes "Anthropology" might also fit here. B.S. Johnson did some interesting things although his best is his most straightforward "Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry". And someone already mentioned "The Mezzanine"...

[@klausolekristiansen2960]

Very interesting. Maybe I should reread Gödel, Escher, Bach. The only other one I had heard of is If a Winter Night a Traveller.

[@michahcc]

Nice!

[@mixolydian2010]

Amazing collection, thanks for introducing them to me. not heard of any of them before. Looking forward to reading them. Cheers

[@mixolydian2010]

The only book i have come across like these is a book called The Perilous Adventures of an Unfulfilled Full Stop by Jim Barrass. Not in print any more. Have all the books you listed on amazon wish list and will get them soon. Thanks again.

[@user-ne5jp9qc9j]

@4:52. A line with a quite accurate description of me.

[@victormaranhaorocha8601]

That video was so mind opening about the "current" developments of literature! I want to read them all! Now I'll try to find more videos like that

[@martinstent5339]

I’d like to see an honorary mention here for “Venus on a Half-shell” by Kilgore Trout, who was a fictional character in many of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. Also, maybe a mention for Sophie’s World, also a kind of philosophical adventure story, going meta and un-meta at various points in the story. About Douglas Hofstadter’s masterpiece: I feel that much more could be said about it. I have all his works on my bookshelf, and my favourite is “Le Ton Beau de Marot” about translation in general and about translating poetry from French to English in particular, although it is much much more than that as one would expect from Hofstadter… The only other one I have is Gadsby, which is a little weird to read, as you would expect!

[@johnforgrave7125]

I just started reading XX by Rian Hughes and feel it deserves a shoutout for this list as well.

[@Alex_...34565]

man i wanna read all of them!

[@plasnoid]

You should probably do a part two to this video. Nice vid thought.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Will definitely happen in the future. :)

[@hemangchauhan2864]

I appriciate unique and novel video games. So I'm glad YT recommended me this video.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Which games can you recommend? 😁

[@seandchoi]

Infinite Jest deserves to be included in this list, or at least be an honorable mention.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

That book is just so big, I haven't gotten around reading it. 😅

[@glootfrootswoot]

New York Collapsed was the first time I encountered a concept like Ship Of Theseus, where there’s another book in the margins

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Great, will put that on my list. Thanks :)

[@indigoziona]

I was about to pause and say "you have to read 253 by Geoff Ryman!" and then read your notes and realised you were getting to that.

[@greggi47]

These are all challenging books. Aside from Pale Fire, all are new to me. I wonder, though, why to skip Laurence Sterne's wonderful book Tristram Shandy. It is a puzzle, perhaps on the cusp of bring a metanovel.

[@barrymoore4470]

American critic Jonathan Rosenbaum argues that 'Tristram Shandy' is still the greatest of all experimental novels--it was postmodern before modernism was even a thing.

[@snowmonster42]

I had no idea . . . I've toyed with reading this for a long time mostly because it's a novel that comes up in so many other novels. I'll give it a try.

[@nl3064]

He can't mention every single goddam off-beat book ever written. I know Tristram is a classic, but why is every third comment some prck who automatically assumes their favorite just _has_ to be mentioned?

[@snowmonster42]

@@nl3064 I actually think we all realize that. The comments are where people can suggest their own favorites for those who are interested. You don't have to be interested. I'm not sure what you were expecting, but you might want to retreat into a copy of Pride and Prejudice until you feel better. That always helps me when I feel cranky.

[@greggi47]

@@nl3064 Many of us pricks know and enjoy books and authors that aren't mentioned in such "recommended" lists and want more people to read and share the pleasures they give. Just as this one told me about unfamiliar titles that I want to know more about.

[@alexduggan68]

We Appy Few is a great book to read. Its the story of a hundred year old man who tells the young Henry 8th what really happened at the battle of Agincourt. Its funny, touching, and debates the nature of reality, truth, language and history.

[@kosterix123]

10:00 everyone I knew in 1990 read Gödel, Escher, Bach - first-semester philosophy, math, music theory and physics. Something about Schrodinger's cat and an eternal crescendo. Not recommended, it goes all over the place and doesn't leave a lasting impression. 253 and hopscotch do sound rather intriguing.

[@lisathomas1622]

Until we remember we are a spirit having a human experience we’re pretty much an amnesiac. Subscribed! Thank you for sharing your weird life.

[@LorenzoWTartari]

I've read Gödel, Escher and Bach, it's a truly beautiful book but i honestly don't think I would've made it if I weren't a math major, the math is only about 20 or 30% of the book, but it's really dense, although the author does an excellent job of explaining it. I definitely would recommend it to any reader interested in maths and computer science and up to a challenge. It took me three months to digest it, but to be fair I'm also a slow reader.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

I am not a math major and boy did that take out the fun at times... 😂

[@4eyesinthecorner399]

A book that comes to mind is ‘Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo’ where the whole novel is a palindrome, so reads the same backwards as it does forwards (as you can see with the title).

[@allonszenfantsjones]

Try 'the orphan Master's son' by Adam Johnson. No spoilers but I have to say I'm 288 pages in and I still haven't figured it out. Also I can only read five pages at a time before I have to put it down. Some of the most elegant phraseology, too. Descriptive af.

[@BlitzoITA]

Im adding this comment just because as an Italian i i loved that Italo Calvino was here

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Prego! ;)

[@kc8391]

I remember hearing about a play that was literally impossible to represent, because it only used abstract concepts and didn't have "characters" per se. I don't remember the name though, I would appreciate if anyone here knows. I've been looking for it for a while :/

[@JanAinali]

If you want a children's book in this genre, check out "The Book That Did Not Want To Be Read" by David Sundin (originally in Swedish).

[@SimonHuggins]

Sophie's World was aimed at children too - a book about famous philosophers inside a mystery was the intention, although upon re-reading recently I found it tedious, a bit chauvanistic, and annoyingly missed out some of the most important philosophers because (I suspect) they didn't fit his narrative - so a bit too preachy. Shame - loved it when I was a kid though.

[@wanderlking8634]

No letter "e" is a lipogram, not to be confused with no versions of the verb "is" (am/will be/was/to be/etc.), which is called E-prime.

[@professorofrhetoric1152]

I could be wrong, but I think Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress doesn’t use the definite article: the.

[@spectrem]

Going through House of Leaves and Truants sections are so hard to get through. Overall enjoying it though

[@brycecartwright2403]

They have a great payoff if you stick with them, and I also recommend skimming any parts of Johnny rambling and not mentioning any actual characters as they don’t make literal sense but are there to create a mood of insanity and paranoia

[@spectrem]

@@brycecartwright2403 yeah I just started skipping paragraphs once it is clear that he is rambling

[@kossnfx]

House of Leaves was pub. in 2000. HIDING by Mark Johnson was pub in 1997 and did the same thing, but not fiction.

[@markpaterson2053]

You may like Embassytown, by China Miéville (I won't give any spoilers)

[@nl3064]

Honestly, House of Leaves and Pale Fire are my two favorite books. 👍 If on a Winter's Night, though, was a torturously boring read.

[@blooodytwins]

The Atrocity Exhibition could be in this list

[@chrisandhongmei]

Pale Fire was being read by the protagonists in Blade Runner 2049, I think.

[@andrewturton484]

What about Ishiguro’s ‘The Unconsoled’? A huge novel in which things are always just about to happen, but never do. How he keeps the thing going for so long is as staggering as it is frustrating.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

That sounds rad. But it on my TBR list! Thanks. :)

[@NOPE.S.P.]

You should read "Vitruvia 144". It basically brings about the end of reality.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Sounds super interesting! Thanks.

[@shaimawahab5916]

Not me stumbling across this video the same day as my House of Leaves copy gets delivered (after two months of placing the order).

[@manchld]

Are any of these books good in audiobook form?

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Most of them don't have audiobooks versions unfortunately. Either because the market would be too small for a publisher to invest money into making one, or because their concepts are too unique to translate them into an audio format...

[@daveatron_]

Ella Minnow Pea is my favourite book of this kind - it's short and funny and not only is it epistolary (written as a series of letters) but it also become increasingly lipogrammatic, dropping more and more letters as it goes on

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Cool, I will put that on my reading list!

[@johnelstad]

My almost 14-year-old son is an avid reader and loves light mysteries (think Stuart Gibbs). As such, I think he might enjoy "S," "House of Leaves," and perhaps "Cain's Jawbone." Do you think these books might be too advanced for him to enjoy?

[@EvilDragon666]

Far too advanced for his age.

[@nicholasbeutler3126]

Yeah, that's probably a bit too much for him at this age. Maybe look into 'Piranesi' by Susanna Clarke, which also feels unique in its concept, but is more written like a 'normal' novel.

[@johnelstad]

@@nicholasbeutler3126 @EvilDragon666 Thanks for taking the time to help. I'll check out Piranesi.

[@nothinghere1996]

Then you should checkout Revelation, as it is a contemporary document.

[@MladenPostruznik]

You might find Dictionary of the Khazars interesting.

[@jomolhari]

Proust would have loved Hrabal

[@charlesspringer4709]

Interesting list. House of Leaves, Gadsby, Feersum Endjinn. I found I quite dislike being the butt of a writer's joke. Like Bauhaus architecture. Are these authors trying to write their Gravity's Rainbow and failing? It just shows the variety in taste.

[@AAJ.1]

Heads up to the narrator: It is redundant to say "I, personally..." There is no other "I" than you, when you say the word "I," therefore no clarification is needed. "Personally" as opposed to what? "Impersonally?" As in "I, impersonally?" Or "I, not me?" Or "I as I was yesterday?" Or "I as I will be tomorrow?" Trust your words and your audience. Another example of a time waster (not used in your video): "the exact same thing." "Same thing" is sufficient. Anything in writing that does not add, detracts.